Pakistani students turning away from Islam

September 6, 2010

One of the great ironies of
the creation of Pakistan, a state whose very existence is defined by
religion, Islam, is that the man considered the Father of the Nation,
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was an atheist. Before being forced into his
role as defender of Muslim interests in 1930s still British India,
Jinnah was a British trained lawyer, given to wearing Savile Row
double-breasted suits, and who loved his whiskey, and is even said to
have eaten pork. At any rate, Jinnah favored a secular constitution
as was evident from the very last major speech that he gave just
before his death in 1948.

My father and his
generation of Pakistanis were agnostics, or at least secular. The
British political commentator, socialist, journalist and novelist of
Pakistani origin, Tariq Ali, who was born in 1943, confirms my
experience. Ali wrote, “I never believed in God, not even between
the ages of six and ten, when I was an agnostic....My parents, too,
were non-believers. So were most of their close friends. Religion
played a tiny part in our Lahore household. In the second half of the
last century, a large proportion of educated Muslims had embraced
modernity.” The later turn to Islamic fundamentalism of Pakistan in
the 1970s, inaugurated by dictator, Zia-ul Haq, was well-satirised by
Hanif Kureishi in his marvellous screenplay for the Stephen Frears
film, “My Beautiful Launderette”; two brothers of Pakistani
origin in their fifties are talking about going back to the old
country, but one brother stops short this wild train of thought by
saying, “The old country [Pakistan] has been sodomized by
religion”.

Yesterday, I read a
story that cheered me up considerably. New Delhi Television on line
published a story on September 5, 2010 about Pakistani youth giving
up religion. A Facebook group has been created for Pakistan's
agnostics and atheists by former Pakistani Muslim, Hazrat NaKhuda
[obviously a pseudonym- the adopted surname means “no God”.]
There are now 100 members. Hazrat, a computer programmer from Lahore,
writes, "I used to be a practicing Muslim. I used to live in
Saudi Arabia. I have done two Hajs and countless Umrahs. Used to pray
five times a day. When I turned 17-18, I realized that the only
reason I was a Muslim was because my parents were Muslims".
Another member, Ahmad Zaidi, wrote, "I'm an agnostic simply
because I see little or no evidence for the existence of God. Some
time ago I decided that I'd never believe anything unless it has a
firm basis in reason and as far as I know (and I admit I know very
little and that there's much to be learnt), there's little or no
evidence for the existence of God."

The members of the group are
students, some studying abroad, but many are at the Lahore
University of Management Sciences. One student, Nawab Zia, says we
should ask not “how we became atheists” but “how we became
believers”. He wrote, "I was a born atheist like every human
being until my parents corrupted me with faith. Every child is born
free and pure”. Ali Rana, who loved Islamic preacher Zakir
Nair and hated author Salman Rushdie, has had a change of heart too.
He now thinks Nair is an "idiot" and Rushdie a genius. Many
members describe on the discussion boards how they “wasted” their
years as theists.
What that famous ex-Communist,
Arthur Koestler, said about communism applies also to ex-Muslims:
“You hate our Cassandra cries and resent us as allies, but when all
is said, we ex-Communists are the only people on your side who know
what it's all about”.

Comments:

#1 Bala (Guest) on Monday September 06, 2010 at 8:15am

Pakistan is one country that desperately needs a generous helping of reason and sanity. Stories like these and bloggers like Dawn’s Nadeem Parcha are what gives me hope that my neighboring country will pick itself up and progress.

This gives one hope for the future. For every atheist in an Islamic county that speaks out, how many more are there still afraid to speak out. Perhaps more than we think.

#3 John Kelly (Guest) on Thursday September 09, 2010 at 11:16am

When we think of problems people in the US experience when we make our atheism public it is unimaginable the danger a Pakistani must experience in Pakistan. Bravery is a term that fits them well.

What of us in the US. I know of people who still attend church only for reasons unrelated to belief in god. They do it because their children would be ostracized, their livelihood would be threatened, their friends would abandon them if they didn’t. Church represents a path for social climbing, a feeling of community, an path for charitable giving. Publicly acknowledging atheism could be a hardship but not a threat to life and limb.

Maybe what we need here is to make contact with atheists from the Islamic countries and have them speak at what meetings we have.

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Ibn Warraq, Islamic scholar and a leading figure in Qur’anic criticism, is a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry | Transnational. He is the author of five books, including What the Qur’an Really Says (Prometheus Books, 2002). His forthcoming book is titled Which Koran?